Chapter 15: Society and Economy Under the Old Regime in the 18th Century

Question 1

Description of the Old Regime

Answer 1

Patterns of social, economic, and political relationships in France pre-1789, before the revolution.

Social: People saw themselves as members of a group with certain privileges, not as individuals.
Economic: Food scarcity, predominant agriculture, slow transportation, low iron ore production, competitive commercial overseas empires, unsophisticated financial institutions
Political: Rule of absolute monarchies, growing bureaucracies and armies led by aristocracy

Question 2

Characteristics of aristocracy in 18th century Europe

Answer 2

1-5% of any given country. Wealthiest sector of the population. Had houses in Parliament, estate or diet. French and British supported economic innovation, making it a common interest with commercial classes.

Question 3

Facts/characteristics of French nobility

Answer 3

Split between nobility “of the sword” (those who got their title through military service) and nobility “of the robe” (those who served in bureaucracy or bought their title). Exempt from taxation (Taille, Corbet) and forced labor. Enjoyed privileges of collecting feudal dues and fishing and hunting/fishing privileges. Power was in Parliament. Hobereaux were wealthy but didn’t have as much political clout because they weren’t apart of the court.

Question 4

Nobility of Poland

Answer 4

Szlachta. Tax exempt until 1741. Possessed the right of life and death over serfs until 1768. Relatively poor. Didn’t have much power, but enough to thwart centralization.

Question 5

Nobility of Austria and Hungary

Answer 5

Judicial powers over peasantry. Exempt from taxes.

Question 6

Nobility of Prussia

Answer 6

Junkers. Made up the bureaucracy.

Question 7

Nobility of Russia

Answer 7

Boyars. Able to transfer their noble status to family. Had judicial protection over rights and power over serfs. Exempt from personal taxes. Lost power during the reign of Peter the Great, but the Charter of the Nobility issues by Catherine the Great gave it back.

Question 8

Aristocratic Resurgence

Answer 8

Nobility’s reaction to threat of expanding monarchy. To defend their position, the nobility made it more difficult to become a noble; reserved appointments for officers of armies, senior posts of bureaucracies and upper church ranks; used authority of aristocracy against monarchs (parliament and parlement), gained more exemptions and collected higher rents.

Question 9

Economic basis of 18th century life

Answer 9

Very land-based and wheat/grain crops. 3/4 lived in the country. Poor lived off the land.

Question 10

Facts of English game laws

Answer 10

Prime example of aristocratic domination and manipulation. Only people owning a certain amount of land could hunt. Gamekeepers protected game from poachers. Black market for luxury meat was created. Local people sold their game to intermediaries called higglers.

Primarily benefit: Landed gentry and aristocracy (and could include royals)

Question 11

Family economy characteristics

Answer 11

Household = basic unit of production and consumption. All goods and income went to the entire family, not just one member. Farming efforts went towards producing food or good to exchange for food. Family members may work elsewhere and send money home. This dominated life of skilled urban artisans in the West (parents and kids), and dominated serfdom in the East (extended families). Servants also participated in the family economy.

Question 12

Concerns of married women in pre-industrial Europe

Answer 12

Producing enough farm goods to ensure an adequate food supply

Question 13

Characteristics about children in the 18th century

Answer 13

Seen as economic burdens or illegitimate. Infants were often sent to wet nurses if rich. Hospitals tried to tend abandoned children. There was a newfound need to educate children in order for them to contribute to their families (by earning money). Education becomes a norm for upper-class children.

Question 14

Bread prices during the 18th century

Answer 14

Slowly but steadily rose. Inflation put pressure on the poor.

Question 15

Agricultural methods used by the Dutch leading up to the Agricultural Revolution

Answer 15

Devised better ways to build dikes to drain the land and make polders. Experimented with/introduced new crops like clover and turnips to increase supply of animal fodder and restore the soil. Fertilization.

Question 16

Europe population from 1700 to 1800

Answer 16

Steady increase.

1700: 100-120 million
1800: 190 million
1850: 260 million

Question 17

Crops introduced to Europe from New World and their impacts

Answer 17

Potato, impact is that more people could live off of smaller acreage of produced crop. More children were surviving to adulthood than ever before now.

Question 18

Innovations and contributors of the Agricultural Revolution

Answer 18

• Dutch landlords and farmers: Better ways to build dikes and drain land, introduced new crops
• Jethro Tull: Used iron plows to deeply turn soil. Planting wheat by drill. (Seed drill and iron plow)
• Charles Townsend: Crop rotation, restored soil nutrients and supplied animal fodder (crop rotation and fertilizers)
• Robert Bakewell: Pioneered new methods of animal breeding that produced more and better animals and more milk and meat

Question 19

Enclosure Movement

Answer 19

Replaced the two-three field/open field system. Intended to use land more rationally and to achieve greater profit. Fencing of common lands, reclamation of previously untilled waste, transformation of strips into block fields. Introduction to capitalism on the countryside. This was controversial. Overall effect: Commercialization of agriculture.

Question 20

Open-Field System

Answer 20

Two or three-field systems of rotation, left large portions of land unproductive. Animals grazed on common land in the summer, stubble of harvest in the winter. Prioritized raising animals for manure before expanding pastureland. Steady, not growing, food supply.

Question 21

Causes, effects and characteristics of 18th century consumer revolution

Answer 21

What sparked it? Increases in demand and supply
People were able to tap into a consumer economy because they had more disposable income. New methods of marketing persuaded people that they wanted consumer goods (Josiah Wedgwood). Change in style: All were aware of new fashion, new food and drink demanded new dishware. Caused innovation in textile production, mining and transportation. Led to Capitalism.

Question 22

Industry which pioneers the Industrial Revolution

Answer 22

Textiles

Question 23

Water frame

Answer 23

Invented by Richard Arkwright. Patented in 1769. Water-powered device designed to permit the production of purely cotton fabric as opposed to a cotton fabric with linen fiber for durability. Cotton output rose 800% between 1780-1800.

Question 24

Spinning jenny

Answer 24

Invented by James Hargreaves. Allowed 16 spindles of threat to be spun. By the end of the century (1800), this could operate 120 spindles.

Question 25

Flying shuttle

Answer 25

Invented by John Kay. Increased productivity of weavers. Created imbalance between productivity of weavers and amount of thread needed for productivity to be effective

Question 26

The Power Loom

Answer 26

Invented by Edmund Cartwright. Machine weaving. By the 1830s, there were more power-loom weavers than hand-loom weavers. New power source for the steam engine.

Question 27

Uses of the Steam Engine

Answer 27

Provided a steady and essentially unlimited power source, pumped water out of coal and tin mines, ran cotton mills, applied to ships and wagons on iron rails, and agriculture.

Question 28

Impact of Steam Engine

Answer 28

Permitted commercialization and heavy industrialization to grow on itself and to expand into one area of production after another. Provided a portable source of industrial power dependent on mineral energy that never tires. Increased and regularized the amount of available energy.

Question 29

Inventors of the Steam Engine

Answer 29

Thomas Newcomen (primary use: mining), James Watt

Question 30

Henry Cort and Iron production during the 18th century

Answer 30

Introduced a new puddling process, a new method for melting and sitting molten ore. Allowed for the removal of more slag (impurities that bubbled to the top of the molten metal) and thus, the production of purer iron. Also developed a rolling mill that continuously shapes still-molten metal into bars, rails or other forms. Achieved a cheaper and more versatile product. Iron production grew.

Statistics: 25,000 tons of iron to over a million tons by the end of the century.

Question 31

Putting-out system of textile production

Answer 31

AKA Domestic system. Agents of urban textile merchants took wool or other unfinished fibers to the homes of peasants, who spun it into thread. Then the thread went to other peasants who wove it into the fabric, then to another peasant for the finished product.

Question 32

Reasons for England being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution

Answer 32

1. Home to London, center of fashion.
2. Single largest free-trade area. Good roads and water ways.
3. Natural resources. Rich deposits of coal and iron ore. 4. Stable political structure. No privileged tax exemptions toward the nobility.
4. Colonial demand.

Question 33

Impact of agricultural and Industrial Revolutions on women

Answer 33

Innovations replaced jobs that women were responsible for. Women’s work became associated with home. Women were seen as only being able to do traditional work, inadequate to do modern things. Women were seen to only supplement a man’s income, leading to inequality in payment. Cottage industry.

Question 34

Locations of main Jewish populations in 18th century

Answer 34

Ghettos, separate communities from non-Jewish Europeans. Most lived in Eastern Europe, Ukraine. Occupied most undesirable sections of cities or poor villages.